Monday, 15 October 2012

Tasty Cornwall

Cornwall is a great place for food lovers. There are few Michelin starred restaurants in Cornwall and Devon but apart from those duchy is full of fantastic food producers, slightly cheaper restaurants run by celebrity chefs such as "Fifteen" (Jamie Oliver) or "The Seafood Restaurant" (Rick Stein), but traditional pubs serve good food as well - we managed to have a decent fish & chips and beef & ale pie in rather cheap spots. Tomorrow I will write a separate post about the best fish & chips in Cornwall.

Fish & chips with a view - pub The Port William in Trebarwith Strand

I would say the best Cornish Pasties we even had were those made by Pengenna Pasties (they have four spots in Cornwall) - pastry was exceptionally good, even I am not a big fan of pastry and the traditional filling with beef, potatoes, swede and onions very tasty and perfectly seasoned (peppery). We also bought 3 different ones to take away and all of the were equally good. Selection is nice, they even offer vegan ones.

Cornish Pastry, Tintagel

Cornwall is famous for pasties as well as clotted cream, fudge or ice cream (I recommend ice cream at Eden Project!) and in every tea room you are able to try thir famous Cornish cream - selection of tea with scones, clotted cream and fruit preserves. This is an absolute must try when you are in this region.

The only tea grown in United Kingdom is produced on the estate in Cornwall and it is called Tregothnan,
if you are not keen to travel there you may as weel buy it at Eden Project. This tea is mainly producet to be exportet abroad so it makes it rare and valued in UK. At Eden Oroject I have spotted probably the most beautiful tin design! Local sardines in these great tins cought my eye, as well as duck rillettes. This was extremely good,made with duck, cranberries and Grand Marier and when I came back home and waslooking for some information about the producer Cornish CharcuterieI have found really enthusiastic review by Rick Stein saying how great this product is. Also in their gift shop there is a selection of famous Cornish Sea Salts.

Tinned sardines and rillettes

Eden Project treats

Festivals, festivals... There are many food and drink festivals in Cornwall, I had a chance to go to Cornwall Food & Drink Festival in Truro. To be honest it wasn't as impressive as my local one yet still there was a good selection of products.

I have done some shopping on the festival and decided to head to south coast to find a nice spot for a picnic. We were quite hungry, found a remote spot with lovely view and had improvised picnic. We had: fantastic wild venison salami (from Deli Farm Charcuterie), rosemary focaccia, ciabatta rolls, smoked goats' cheese Tesyn, traditional saffron cake with dried fruits, local ales (from a brewery called Penpont), and very tasty raw chocolate pie with pink Himalayan salt (from Raw Choc Pie).
On the festival there was a nice selection of locally produced cheeses, probably themost famoous ones are Davidstow Cheddar, Cornish Yarg, or my favourite Cornish Blue.
We also bought Cornish Blue & fig pâté.- one of the best things I have ever tried. There is also very tasty pear and walnut version of this pâté.

post-festival improvised picnic

Probably the most popular and well known brewery in Cornwall is St. Austell Brewery
and we have tried their ales in every pub we went to. Town is not interesting ate all, but the brewr is worth visiting. There are guided tour, beer tasting and pint of beer of your selection in their pub after the tour is included in a ticket price. You can shop in their gift shop and eat something in their pub. Menu is not impressive, but I was pleasantly surprise to see Cornwall's smoked hog's pudding - traditional thick sausage that can cotain an offal. It was tasty, but not as good as black pudding or Scottish haggis.

brewery tour

Hog's pudding and ale

I can't think of anything else I should tell you about amazing Cornish food produce. I obviously know there are many, many more to discover and I will definately go back one day to this tasty part if United Kingdom to search more inspiring food and drink.

beef & ale pie in one of the pubs and famous Cornish cream tea: scones, clotted cream and fruit preserves